Mar 5 2003
From The Space Library
ESA formally opened its first deep space ground station in New Norcia, Australia. Construction on the US$47 million (EUR 28 million) facility had begun in April 2000. The key component of the station was a massive antenna, 40 meters (125 feet) high and weighing 600 tonnes (661.4 tons or 600,000 kilograms), with a 35-meter (110-foot) dish. ESA had selected the New Norcia site because its distance from urban areas protected it from interference from other transmission devices, its latitude was perfect for deep space operations, and its weather was excellent. ESA had built and opened the station in time for it to play a key role in ESA's Mars Express mission, scheduled for launch in June. The Mars Express craft would carry a lander dubbed Beagle 2~named in honor of the ship that Charles Darwin sailed on during his search for the origins of life~which would map the surface, subsurface, atmosphere, and ionosphere of Mars. (ESA, “ESA's First Deep Space Ground Station Opens in Western Australia,” ESA news release 14-2003, 5 March 2003, http://www.esa.int/esaCP/Pr_14_2003_p_EN.html (accessed 28 August 2008); Agence France-Presse, “Australian Town Host to European Space Quest,” 6 March 2003.
NASA announced that Administrator Sean O’Keefe had appointed three new members to the CAIB in compliance with a request from CAIB Chairperson Harold W. Gehman Jr. The new members were Douglas D. Osheroff, the J. G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University and a 1996 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics; Sally K. Ride, a physicist and professor of Space Science at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a former NASA astronaut and the first American woman in space; and John M. Logsdon, Director of the George Washington University Space Policy Institute. O'Keefe had also appointed NASA astronaut retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Michael J. Bloomfield, in response to Gehman's request that Bloomfield replace former astronaut Bryan D. O'Connor as Astronaut Advisor to the Board. O'Connor would return to NASA Headquarters in his role as NASA Associate Administrator for Safety and Mission Assurance. (NASA, “New Members Added to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board,” news release 03-097, 5 March 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/mar/HP_news_03097.html (accessed 25 August 2008).
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